Cameron's most zealous reformer Michael Gove is turning his attention to the legal profession, but how will his big idea go down?

In his first major speech as Justice Secretary on Monday, among other things Michael Gove started a negotiation with the legal profession on their “social responsibility”. Specifically, he said that “those who have benefited financially from our legal culture need to invest in its roots . . . I believe that more could—and should—be done by the most successful in the legal profession to help protect access to justice for all.”

For the moment, he seems only to want lawyers to volunteer more of their time to serve those who cannot afford to pay for legal advice or representation. But Gove made it clear that the status quo is not defensible. The profession won’t precisely be negotiating with a gun to their heads but the Justice Secretary has certainly taken off his jacket to show them the holster.

Requiring suppliers in a market to fulfil social responsibilities is quite common. Royal Mail, for example, like postal service providers throughout Europe, has a universal service obligation. This means it is required to deliver post six days a week to every address in the country at the same price. It can’t cut off service due to the lack of demand or high cost. Banks, building societies and other firms providing loans and credit are required to pay a debt advice levy. Regardless of what they may themselves do to advise their customers or provide financial education in schools and colleges, they also have to provide a total of around £35m per year to the Money Advice Service.

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Comments

Richard Moorhead, UCL Faculty of Laws

June 24, 2015 at 16:25

Interesting idea.I'm not sure that's right about the Law Society levy - are you talking about interest on client's accounts, I wonder? That's taking from money which actually belongs to clients. Not that forward thinking to take some of that interest (if unclaimed by clients or uneconomic to return to them individually,as I suspect the proposal was). And not that much money to be raised, especially when interest rates are on the floor.Any levy on fee income would have to be pretty substantial even to reverse the legal aid cuts: would it fall on all firms? On what basis of calculation? The cost of legal services is already a barrier to access to justice, so would we want to ensure some sort of taper way from firms serving Joe Public?It's worth pointing out that the Money Advice Service covers a fraction of the legal need that is probably generated by banks (witness the gap in the market being plugged by claims handling companies and the difference between MAS and what the legal aid scheme used to fund).It may be worth noting that the Legal Action Group floated proposals in the 1990s that the City should pay a levy to meet the very large costs of a small number of fraud trials on the legal aid fund. Make the polluter not the service provider pay? An interesting possibility might be a levy on top of costs paid by unsuccessful parties when they pay legal costs, though enforcing that through the dominant mechanisms of settlement might be tricky (and some costs payers are ill equipped to meet the costs, just as some firms would be ill equipped to pay a levy).

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